Trib: Dems nominate former Lebo commissioner for House vacancy

Former Mt. Lebanon Commissioner Dan Miller will be the Democratic nominee for the state House seat formerly held by Matt Smith, who was elected earlier this year to the Pennsylvania Senate. Miller, an assistant county solicitor and volunteer firefighter, was the sole Democrat to submit his name for consideration by Democratic Committee members from the 42nd District Sunday night in Mt. Lebanon. Read the full article:

• www.triblive.com/news/allegheny/3133394-74/commissioner-lebanon-democratic (Pittsburgh Tribune-Review)

The Almanac: Mt. Lebanon sets date for dedication of vets memorial

After more than two years of planning and fund raising, Mt. Lebanon will dedicate its Veterans Memorial on Morgan Drive at 7:30 p.m. May 27.

Keynote speaker will be Mt. Lebanon resident, Vietnam veteran and former Pittsburgh Steelers running back Rocky Bleier, who chaired the fund-raising committee with former Mt. Lebanon Commissioner Dan Gigler.

Speakers will include Mt. Lebanon commission President David Brumfield and other elected officials, in addition to former commissioner Dan Miller who launched the project. Representatives of Duquesne Light, which awarded the project a $220,000 Power of Light Grant, will also attend.

Read the full article:

• www.thealmanac.net/alm/story11/04-04-2012-ML-vets-monument (The Almanac)

The Almanac: Mt. Lebanon Veterans Memorial gets boost from Duquesne Light

It was a bright occasion at the Dec. 13 Mt. Lebanon Commission meeting when Duquesne Light Company CEO Richard Riazzi presented former Pittsburgh Steeler and Mt. Lebanon Veterans Memorial Chairman Rocky Bleier a check for $220,000 to fund the lighting component of the Mt. Lebanon Veterans Memorial.

Also on hand to receive the donation were memorial chairman Dan Gigler and commission president Daniel Miller. Dubbed the "Power of Light," the donation will go to the installation of a lighted flag, flagpole and the installation of several hundred in-ground lights to pay tribute to Korean War, Vietnam War and World War II veterans from Mt. Lebanon.

Read the full article:

• www.thealmanac.net/alm/story11/12-21-2011-ML-vets-memorial (The Almanac)

Commissioner Miller Updates Us On The Budget

5th Ward Commissioner Dan Miller's latest blog posting gives us an update on the 2012 budget hearing:

Read the full article:

• www.danmillerward5.com/2012-budget-hearing-update

Commissioner Miller's Resolution Regarding Our Parks and Fields

UPDATE: The resolution was defeated during Monday night's meeting.

Dan Miller, the 5th Ward Commissioner, recently posted the following blog entry on his web site. It contains information about a resolution that he introduced at this evening's Commission meeting regarding the issuance of bonds to fund development of the McNeilly Road property as well as improvements to the pool, Main Park and Bird Park.

Read the full posting:

• www.danmillerward5.com/pool-and-fields-resolution

Trib: Bids come in high for Mt. Lebanon veterans memorial

Bids for Mt. Lebanon's planned veterans memorial have again come back higher than what's been raised, but low enough that the project is affordable if it does not include scattered lights that are designed to represent soldiers around the world.

Bids opened on Wednesday show McKeesport-based TBI Contracting as the lowest bidder, at $198,500 for the memorial alone, $10,000 for a retaining wall and $280,000 for the electrical work, including the lights. The municipality might seek a grant to cover the electrical work, Commissioner Dan Miller said.

Read the full article:

• www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/pittsburgh/s_757968.html (Pittsburgh Tribune-Review)

P-G: Bids come in high for Mt. Lebanon veterans memorial

Bids for the construction of a veterans memorial in Mt. Lebanon came in substantially higher than expected today.

But the municipality is still committed to building and dedicating the memorial by Memorial Day 2012, said Dan Miller, a Mt. Lebanon commissioner who has been involved in the project.

The estimated cost of building the memorial was about $200,000, and a fund-raising drive over the last year has raised about $197,000, of which $27,000 went to fund-raising and planning costs, said Susan Morgans, the public information officer for Mt. Lebanon.

Read the full article:

• www.post-gazette.com/pg/11159/1152292-100.stm (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

Trib: Use of fund balance may be stopped in Mt. Lebanon

Mt. Lebanon commissioners debated this week whether the municipality should continue spending its savings in order to pay for operating expenses or whether prohibiting the practice could make it harder to balance the budget in tough times.

Commission president Dan Miller said the municipality has been leaning on its undesignated fund balance for the past three years in order to handle day-to-day costs of operation, instead of building it up or treating it solely as a "rainy-day fund." While Miller did not introduce legislation at the Tuesday night meeting that would prohibit that process, Commissioner Joe DeIuliis said taking the fund balance off the table at budget time could leave the commission having to contemplate service cuts or tax hikes.

Read the full article:

• www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/pittsburgh/s_736543.html (Pittsburgh Tribune-Review)

P-G: Commissioner feels the call to serve community

Daniel L. Miller still hears the words of his late immigrant grandmother, Grace Miller, echoing in his ears, "It is a great country -- and you've got to contribute."

More importantly, he still heeds them.

It is one of the reasons he sought election as a Mt. Lebanon commissioner, and one of the reasons he said he will not seek a second term as Fifth Ward representative when his four-year term ends Dec. 31.

Read the full article:

• www.post-gazette.com/pg/11069/1130832-55.stm (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

Trib: Mt. Lebanon commissioners' chief won't run for re-election

The president of the Mt. Lebanon Board of Commissioners won't seek a second term on the board, which he says will let him focus exclusively on a broad slate of financial and organizational reforms by the year's end.

Ward 5 Commissioner Dan Miller posted the notice on his website this week and closed out his re-election account, saying he'd prefer to focus on accomplishing as much as he can during his last year in office, then spending more time with his 4-year-old son and the Mt. Lebanon Volunteer Fire Department.

Read the full article:

• www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/s_720980.html (Pittsburgh Tribune-Review)

Miller Out, Fraasch In

The 2011 election season has begun with two announcements regarding the Mt. Lebanon Commission.

Dan Miller, the current 5th Ward Commissioner, recently announced that he will not seek re-election after serving 1 term.

Kelly Fraasch, president of Parent Resource Network, and wife of former School Board Director James Fraasch, has declared her candidacy for the 5th Ward Commissioner position on the Democratic ticket via the following email:

Dear Friends:

After thoughtful consideration, I have decided to run for the Ward 5 Commission seat.

Dan Miller has been a wonderful advocate and served our Ward and Mt Lebanon with the utmost integrity. His service has inspired me to want to work for my neighbors and fellow community members to ensure our voices are counted. While his shoes will be extremely tough to fill, I believe I have the leadership and ability to be a strong commissioner for those in my ward and in Mt Lebanon.

Kelly

Why Didn’t the School Board Pursue the Shared-Parking Option Earlier? (Updated)

Updated 2010-10-16 15:55 with details from school-board director Jo Posti’s blog post about the school district’s zoning appeal being denied.

Over on his blog, Commissioner Dan Miller writes about being inundated with questions about the school district losing its zoning appeal. He guesses that the school board is likely to respond by resurrecting an idea the municipal planner had suggested a couple of years back – a shared-parking agreement between the school district and municipality for the Commissioners’ Lot. This agreement would provide the school district with the additional parking needed to meet zoning requirements.

To give residents an idea of how long it takes for the gears of government to turn, Commissioner Miller offers a potential timeline for the school district’s detour through the municipal government, first to obtain the parking agreement and, following that, re-approval of its plans.

The timeline begins with this Monday’s school board meeting, where the board could vote to pursue a shared-parking agreement. The proposed agreement would then go to the commissioners. If they approve the agreement, the school district could then submit parking-enhanced plans to the planning board. The planning board could then meet in December or January to grant preliminary approval of the plans and to recommend to the commissioners that the plans receive final approval. Finally, the commissioners could vote on the planning board’s recommendation – in late February or, more likely, in early March 2011.

I gather that the school district would be able to continue with the high-school project after receiving preliminary approval from the planning board in December or January. Still, that’s quite a detour.

Which raises the question: Why didn’t the school district pursue the shared-parking option earlier?

The option was recommended to the school district two years ago. The school district knew it lacked adequate parking back in March, when the zoning hearing board told it so. So why pursue a time-consuming court appeal to an uncertain conclusion without securing other options? Court cases are always a gamble. If the school district had such an obvious way to hedge its bet, why didn’t it?

The only reason I can fathom is that the school district didn’t think it needed other options; it thought the zoning appeal was a sure thing. If that’s the case, what made it so confident? On its merits, the case didn’t look strong to me, so the sure-thing explanation seems hard to believe.

In the end, it’s a mystery to me. If anybody can explain why the shared-parking option wasn’t pursued earlier, let’s hear it.

Update

On her blog, school-board director Jo Posti implies that a shared-parking agreement was, in fact, pursued but has just taken a long, long time:

[T]he parking agreement concept isn’t new but one that has required ongoing discussions regarding language and terms... It’s an agreement unique to the community that’s been given thoughtful consideration since there isn’t local precedent to model.

But Commissioner Miller’s account is somewhat different: “Some may also be aware that there were some discussions on [the shared-parking agreement] in April and May of this year – but until recently the issue was dead.”

So what really happened? Did the school district earnestly pursue a shared-parking agreement during its zoning appeal or didn’t it?

Dan Miller: Irresponsible Debt and the Public Credit Card

On his blog, Commissioner Dan Miller writes about a topic that's hot in Mt. Lebanon these days: looming public expenses and how to pay for them. He writes, "If we continue borrowing money to pay for reconstructing our streets (like we did in 2009), we could run up public debt by $18 to $36 million in principle alone over the next 20 years. To say nothing of the interest payments. Just to take care of our streets."

To help our municipality kick the habit of borrowing for predictable expenses, Commissioner Miller proposed a pay-as-you-go ordinance for street reconstruction:

Mt. Lebanon has a longstanding policy of implementing an annual street reconstruction program with a goal of rebuilding approximately one mile of our paved streets every year. This program has largely been funded over the last decade by the issuing of debt in the form of Municipal bonds that are payable over twenty years and accrue interest. While it is integral to the Municipality to have an annual street reconstruction program, it is also integral to the taxpayers that such annual, reoccurring expenses be appropriately lodged in its general fund accounting so that the true cost of government is more accountable and transparent to our residents.

This ordinance was introduced at the last Commission meeting. It is scheduled for a public hearing and possible vote on Monday, 23 August, 2010. If you have something to say about the proposed ordinance, be at Monday's meeting.

Commissioner Miller's entire post is informative; do read it: Irresponsible Debt and the Public Credit Card. (One interesting tangential statistic caught my eye: the total per capita cost for all municipal services in 2009 was $690 – about $58 a month.)

What do you think? Is annual street reconstruction something that ought to be anticipated in the budget, or is it okay to pay for it with borrowed money?

Strategic-Plan Survey: Preliminary Results

Commissioner Dan Miller writes on his blog about some early results from the survey undertaken as part of the municipality's strategic-planning process. A few highlights:

• When told they had to lower spending somewhere in the budget, surveyed residents chose to cut spending on civic activities, then zoning enforcement, forestry, parking, and public information. The number one response, however, was that no services should be cut, even if it means raising taxes and fees.
• When asked what services should receive more funding, residents chose the library first, then recreation facilities, street maintenance, parks, and planning for the future. The number two response: nothing should get more funding.
• Most surveyed residents said that services in Mt. Lebanon were good; the next most-popular response was that services were great. Only 0.7% said services were poor or inadequate.
• In describing Mt. Lebanon as a place to live, 48% of surveyed residents said it was excellent; 43% said good; 0.4% said poor.

For the full highlights, see Dan Miller's blog: Strategic Plan Preliminary Survey Results.

Firefighter Makes Valiant Effort

On Mother's Day morning, Dan Miller was driving with his wife through Ohio, 10 minutes west of Steubenville, when they saw a plume of black smoke rising beyond the road.

Mr. Miller, a Mt. Lebanon commissioner and a volunteer for the municipality's fire department, pulled off Route 151 to investigate. He found flames shooting out of a two-story wooden house. A woman was screaming that her baby was still inside.

Read more: www.post-gazette.com/pg/10133/1057748-55.stm

Read more: Commissioner Miller's posting regarding the fire

Mt. Lebanon Community Gets Loud In The Blogosphere

Forget gossip over the back fence: These days in Mt. Lebanon, community bloggers are the town criers.

Commissioners Dan Miller and D. Raja have blogs. So do school members Josephine Posti and James Fraasch. The high school's technology director Christopher Stengel has his own blog, and residents Joe Polk, Tom Moertel, Kristen Linfante and Elaine Labalme also run blogs that discuss community developments and events.

Read more: www.post-gazette.com/pg/10063/1039995-55.stm

Reviewing Raja's Budget Message

Over the holidays, Commissioner Raja sent out an email (and posted to his web site) explaining why he voted for the 2010 municipal budget. This was particularly interesting to me since Commissioner Miller had previously posted his comments in opposition to it.

A couple of issues caught my eye:

First, Commissioner Raja seems to trumpet the savings of limiting COLA raises for employees in 2010 by pegging the COLA to the current low inflation numbers. Forget that fact that this seems to treat people differently just because they don't have a union, does anyone really think that inflation is going to stay low? Or regardless of how it goes up and down, are we now saying to the employees that whatever the inflation number is at the end of the year you will get that raise when the number exceeds 3%?

Commissioner Raja also made a reference to paying for “expenses from the fund balance.” He said that he would “have preferred to implement organic changes that could have funded these increases on a sustainable basis going forward.”

An example of his “organic changes” seems to be the merger of the Assistant Manager and Finance Director positions. If I understood the budget broadcast, the merger of the two positions was unanimously approved by the Commission. The debate seemed to be about what would happen to the Assistant Managers HR duties. Raja wanted those duties distributed amongst other staff while the majority supported the managers recommendation of hiring a new HR person. It was said that having a separate HR position was one of the Matrix report recommendations.

Commissioner Raja said that if the majority had agreed with him we would have saved annually $141,000. Commissioner Miller said that the 2011 budget shortfall is already $3.14 million.

Commissioner Raja said that he recommended “organic changes” (notice the plural) that “could have funded these increases on a sustainable basis going forward.”

Anyone else interested in knowing what his organic suggestions were that would solve our problem? It would be great for Commissioner Raja to post his suggestions that were rejected by the Commission so we could evaluate them ourselves -- and if necessary -- lobby other Commissioners to adopt them!

Additionally, I saw that the majority did not support a strategic planning process in 2010. Given the size of our problem for 2011, I wonder why this was not supported. Doesn't the municipality need a plan - and need it quickly?

Ward 5 Commissioner Dan Miller Elaborates on the Present and Future of Mt. Lebanon

Ward 5 Commissioner Dan Miller has a column in the current issue of MTL magazine on the municipal budget and municipal services. Over at his blog, he has posted a much longer, richer version of the same piece. Surf over for an unusually detailed look at how Mt. Lebanon produces its budget sausage.

Important Updates from Commish Dan Miller

Commissioner Dan Miller has blanketed his website with important news and information about what's happening right now in Mt. Lebanon:

A review of the status of RAD funding cuts for the Mt. Lebanon Library

Pushing an initiative regarding the condition of "private streets" in Mt. Lebanon

The Mt. Lebanon Fire Department needs new recruits and citizens to help find them

Community notes (the coming ULTRA Party, the Denis Theater film series, LeboALERT, the Veterans Committee, and an answer to a question that I wouldn't think to ask about staffing snow plows)

Questions and answers about the new "speed humps" on Mapleton and Altoona

Question and answer about "paper streets" or unimproved rights of way in Mt. Lebanon, with a very helpful and informative map of those "paper streets." I take it that this is an authoritative map maintained by the Municipality. (Unfortunately and understandably, it does not indicate either the legal ownership or the beneficial ownership of the rights of way. But it does confirm that they are indeed rights of way and that the Municipality regards them as such, which partly answers a question that has come up on this blog before in connection with private efforts to block access to them.)

An update about the Mt. Lebanon Historical Society

A summary of Mt. Lebanon Fire Department standards for "cover," meaning response times and special risk factors in different zones of Mt. Lebanon.

Commissioner Wants Municipalitywide Approach To Traffic

There are no easy solutions toward fixing/calming/rerouting burgeoning traffic loads on the streets of Mt. Lebanon, but Commissioner Dan Miller is hoping that, for starters, the municipality can avoid the quick-and-expensive route.

"We need a municipalwide approach," said Mr. Miller, a first-term commissioner for the 5th Ward, which includes some of Mt. Lebanon's busiest roads.

Residents at a recent commissioners' meeting spoke of frightening encounters between cars and pedestrians, of vehicles hitting trees and running up onto sidewalks.

Link: www.post-gazette.com/pg/09050/950090-55.stm